news.

i’ve broken my arm. i was being reckless on a mountain, so it offered me a lesson. it is too early to know if its hard reminder, to slow down and take better care, has found purchase. grimacing on the ground with a broken rib a month before, my bike’s tires spinning slowly on the black ice beside me, didn’t seem to do it. lessons, however, are repeated in greater intensity until they are learned. perhaps the second time is the charm. it has increased my empathy for the fractured.

my uncle has died, my dad’s only and younger brother. he was a quiet man, a fisherman and trapper. his was a sudden and severe illness, and my family’s grief made for the blackest January. when i delivered a eulogy, with my only and younger brother, the church in the small town where he lived was filled with hundreds of people, many standing in the aisles. “if you had any doubt about the mark a quiet and gentle soul leaves on the lives of others, look around.”

there are some parts of life that we don’t get asked questions about. living and dying are two.

aweil is alive. she is the girl for whom i wrote my book, the one with tuberculosis who arrived to the hospital early in my mission, and stayed with me throughout it. i visited her every day, got to watch her change from a dwindling infant to a strong, smiling, laughing, grasping girl with bright eyes. the war came, after i’d left, and i lost her. she’s been found. or at least word has been. she is in a town in southern sudan, with her father. that news has made for the brightest February.

it was one of two wishes i had of SMiS: to find out if she was ok. i figured if my thesis was correct, that the world isn’t just something that happens to you, but that you get to create it in some important ways, that is what i wanted to make happen. one day, i will meet her, and give her my book. in the meantime, i will keep on working to make sure she is able to read it. 90% of women in southern sudan would not be able to, no matter what language it was in.

my book, SMiS has been nominated for the Shaughnessy-Cohen prize in political writing. I willtravel to Ottawa (Canada’s capital) for the announcement, and for a series of surrounding events. some of them will put me in contact with Members of Parliament, and perhaps allow me to speak to the fragile year ahead for Sudan. so much attention has been on Darfur that the larger issue of the relationship between north and south, the election in april 2010 and the referendum in 2011, has only recently been remembered. south sudan, in particular, needs assistance for a transition to parliamentary success, and to prepare itself for its autonomous privileges. if ever there was a year for the international community to increase its diplomatic efforts in assisting the country, the linchpin for the stability of its neighbours (chad, Uganda, CAR), it is the one before us.

it is my sincere honour to be in such august company as i am with the other writers on the SC shortlist. it is also a privilege to have my book recognized as political writing. of the criticisms of my book that frustrate me the most are those that fault an absence of a pointed discourse on sudan’s political tableau. it was not for a lack of insight. it was in constant focus. we talked about it every day. we needed to negotiate the circumstances to ensure we were able to do the work we were there to do, to show solidarity for the people who suffered their lack of political agency so deeply. that our position in the country was tenuous, and the hospital in abyei vulnerable, made direct declarations of fealty reckless, with hard lessons soon to follow. both at the time, and since. that the SC jury was able to recognize the story told between the lines, of the heavy strain between north and south, the young soldiers they employed, the displacement of people soon asked to vote, the rising tension of nomadic peoples because of poorly established land rights in and around sudan, and on and on, is a true thrill.

i will have the privilege of meeting the other authors, and learning things of them and from them. i also relish the chance to tell something of my book, and explain the most important part of its story: like aweil’s, it isn’t about the past. it’s about the future. and we can help make it.

cast comes off wednesday, in sh’allah. i had booked two weeks off for a snowboarding trip out west, starting today, but i cancelled it. instead i’m watching toronto’s trademark rainysnow (nature’s most boring phenomenon) sift straight down and splatter on the ground. there’s a lesson in there somewhere.